How Others See Us - North Carolina

Southerners v. Northerners

Southern United States 

Northeast United States

Interviewing those from my host institution with a foreign perspective of my home was difficult because everyone is from America.  Furthermore, there are only twenty-two students, and only one of them are from this state, North Carolina.  As Duke University only admits a small percentage of students from its own state to ensure diversity, I have not gained significant perspective from “southern” residents. Furthermore, because we are on an island, I do not have a vehicle, and transportation is considerably limited, I have not interacted with the people in the town as much as I would have liked. Therefore, I spend the most time with people from Ohio and California. 

           

However, I was able to find two North Carolina residents.  The first was one of my RA’s, Kelsey.  She informed me that she has always lived in North Carolina but her mother’s family is from Philadelphia so she has slight familiarity with “The North”.  She jokingly called us “Yankees”, as that is what many of the stereotypical southerners call northerners. However, she explained that she does not have very strong feelings about other regions of the country, i.e. she does not focus on stereotypes or notice major regional differences.  I believe this is partially due to the high diversity that Duke establishes as well as the globalization of today’s society.  We are not very limited to our own area as we see other regions on television and movies and can interact with people from across the country with ease.  In other words, there has been significantly more cultural mixing within the country since the age of the Internet. After talking about the significance of Philly cheesesteaks for a considerable amount of time, she finally described people from the northeast.  She said we tend to be unfriendly, busy, and competitive, though she absolutely did not believe this applies to everyone nor held the feelings very strongly.  She elaborated by saying people in North Carolina tend to ask strangers how they are doing more often, even if they do not genuinely care, just to be courteous.  She struggled to answer when asked if I fit this image.  As we do not focus much on our home locations, when getting to know me she did not view me from the scope of “being an northerner”, so her initial reaction was that I do not.  She got to know me as an individual, not as a person from a certain location.  I think this is common among Americans, because many of us do not necessarily hold a lot of value on our regional location.  We tend to view each other as relatively the same as we are all Americans; therefore, I feel like the responses would be significantly different if I were truly studying abroad and getting the opinion of someone who has had little exposure to Americans.  Stereotypes tend to be made stronger about groups with whom you have limited interaction because there is nothing to break those stereotypes.  Kelsey had many interactions throughout her life that broke the regional stereotypes and therefore did not think much of them.  Though she did say it was “weird” I was a vegetarian because people from North Carolina love eating meat.

           

The second person I asked, James, a friendly worker at our dining hall in his younger twenties, had similar responses.  He added a more political aspect to his evaluation: he discussed how he considers the northeast to be considerably more politically and socially liberal than North Carolina.  He gathered this opinion more unbiased by following presidential elections in which he noticed PA tends to vote blue, as in democrat.  But less officially, this view is commonly associated with the north by the many conservative NC residents whom believe that northerners are very left winged, often within a negative connotation.  Though James did not actually have an opinion about the political agenda of the north, as he was not excessively opinionated.  Also, in line with Kelsey’s evaluation he said that he would expect people in the North to be helpful and cordial if approached but would be overall more reserved and less outgoing to strangers, unlike those from the South.  He said this opinion came from the stereotype of the typical angry, callous New Yorker, which often becomes applied to the entire region. When asked if I fit this description, James said I came off a relatively liberal, but explained that it may be more because I am a college student and “we all tend to be liberal”.  He did say that I do not come off as very reserved and unpleasant most of the time as I tend to be friendly and talk every time I see him (we share the same favorite television shows so we often have a lot to talk about).  Later on, James was surprised when I explained that most regions of Pennsylvania are not very liberal, especially Meadville.